An Exorcism
by Laziness Incarnate
Summary: A priestess labours to exorcise a ghost on behalf of her client, a housewife in Tokyo. She does not know the ghost, nor does she care to. This fic was originally written for the tenth blind go challenge on Livejournal in September 2010.


**An Exorcism**

Honestly, exorcisms were such a pain.

Today was no doubt going to be another failure. If Kanae had known the ghost was such a powerful one, she probably would have never taken this job.

If only her sect used the tried-and-true exorcism methods that other Shinto sects used. Who had ever heard of doing an exorcism _remotely_? Why go to all the trouble to summon a ghost to your location when you could go _its_ location? Where, you know, it would be easy enough to just cast out the ghost from whatever object or person it was inhabiting? Sure, it was a bit safer for Kanae if she brought the spirit to A Place of Power (in this case, a sacred stream near sacred Mitsumine Shrine on sacred Mount Mitsumine), and safer for the general public if the ghost was away from the cities when she tried to forcibly cast it from this world...but how safe was it to leave ghosts un-exorcised for weeks while she mucked around with summoning spells "borrowed" from Tendai Buddhism?

In all her past attempts - about ten or so, she had lost count - she had managed to touch the ghost's spiritual essence once or twice. The ghost had shuddered and its essence had flickered, perhaps. She wasn't quite sure. She had not yet managed to bring it to the mountain.

Kanae sighed with weary disgust as she laid out her materials for the ritual: a sakaki tree branch tied with white paper, which the client had had to offer up a fee for (Kanae started waiving the fee after the first two failures); her wooden nusa wand bearing streams of yet more white paper; an ofuda for protection, in case she actually succeeded in summoning the ghost today; and running water and sacred fire, for purification. The water was provided by the mountain stream, but the pyre was something she'd built and sanctified herself. Not that it helped much.

Okay. Everything was ready. It was go time.

Kneeling, she calmed herself and performed the breathing and mental exercises she always used to put herself into a trance. She was really good at this by now. Almost automatically, her mind fell into the correct state. She began the chants and slowly waved the nusa wand, fixing her mind on what she knew about the ghost.

The client had asked for help because her dreams had turned strange of late. Or rather, the sounds in her dreams had turned strange. Gloomy whispers and a haunting flute melody, always the same melody. Sometimes a rhythmic tapping, like small stones raining one by one on a wooden veranda, pleasant and dull. The sound of imaginary water trickling through her house, background noise to the domestic scenes she dreamed up from her lonely housewife existence.

At first the sounds, she said, had been merely odd, foreign-seeming. But for the past month they had been growing more intrusive, then frightening, so that the client was now waking every night from her dreams in a panic. The whispers grew louder, more menacing. The flute song was the same as it had always been, something born from wind rather than human breath, but now it carried an undercurrent of despair. The stones fell in torrents on the wood now, but still one by one, and she could hear every single wretched clack in unending sequence. Her dream water roared like a vast river, drowning out all other sounds, or it filled her ears with silence, engulfing her like a cold dark cocoon, as if she were underwater.

Clearly, this ghost had some unresolved issues.

Kanae had never heard the dream sounds herself when she tried to summon the ghost, but then people who could hear and see spirits or be touched by their thoughts were incredibly rare. The head miko at her shrine was such a person. So was her client, to some extent. Kanae was not envious - such a gift was a curse, really. She had received enough training to know that much. She could vaguely sense the spiritual energy of ghosts and knew the precise steps required to send them to the next world, and that was enough for her. She didn't need to psychoanalyze them or help them get over their attachments to this world. Her sect didn't do that. She didn't need to talk to ghosts. She only needed power over it -

_Power over its dreams and its despair. _

The summoning spell was not enough, she realized abruptly. The ghost was powerful, and she was not one who could speak to it. Water and stones and air, as in her client's dream, that was what she needed. Why hadn't she seen this until now?

She ceased her chant and lowered her wand. With one hand she grasped blindly at the dirt until she found a handful of pebbles, which she rolled in her hand until the soil fell away and she could see their whiteness. They were smooth, worn down by mountain wind and mountain rain, and the sound they made as she cast them into the stream was a clear offering to the river god, more lovely than any flute melody.

She resumed her chanting and held her wand with greater conviction. The spell was mere words, almost useless but for the wind of her breath, sounds that flowed together like a sutra, like river water, like earth, and she nearly gasped as she felt the threads of her power begin to pull-

The ghost was there.

Its eyes were closed, and its lips were moving ever-so-slightly, but of course Kanae could not hear its words. Its pale face was surprisingly peaceful. She had never seen such a beautiful ghost before. A young man, but his hair was long and lustrous and he wore long white robes and an eboshi hat straight out of a Heian period play and Kanae realized, with a sudden fluttering in her stomach, that this ghost was very, very old.

It was only during summonings that she could see spirits. It was always a shock to see a ghost's form, to know its humanness.

The ghost must have sensed her consternation, because his eyes snapped open and he gazed at her with an expression that quickly turned from surprise to horror. His lovely hair flew about his face as he frantically glanced around him. His eyes were very wide. He was still trying to speak - no, he was crying out, he was begging her, as many ghosts did, but his expression was so tortured she almost thought that she could hear his beseechments. Kanae was suddenly acutely glad for her spiritual deafness.

A ghost that was a thousand years old or more. Surely its attachment to the world was great.

Kanae shuddered and closed her eyes, not wanting to see the accusation written on the creature's face, knowing that hesitation would only weaken her spirit. Instead, she began speaking the words of banishment - a rote exercise, not the real source of her power against this ghost, but it gave her courage. She focussed on the sound of the water. She knew it feared water above all else.

Her mountain stream was unnamed and unknown, and there was power in that fact. Its god was still wild. She gave herself to the sacred rhythm of its flow and thought only of purification, of washing away that which did not belong to this world. Suddenly it was as if she were underwater; she felt the terror of it as the tiny stream thundered like a vast river in her mind, drowning out all other sounds.

_You do not exist_, she commanded the ghost silently. _You must disappear._

She felt the river - for it was a great river now, grown in stature and might - claim that which had once been taken from it. Abruptly the roar of the water gave way to a smothering calm. It filled her ears with its silence, engulfing her like a cold dark cocoon, the peace of erasure that belonged only to the dead. She felt a great sadness, suddenly, and resignation that she knew was not her own.

When she opened her eyes, the ghost was gone.

Shaking, she fell to all fours, allowing her wand to fall to the dirt. She gave herself a minute to rest until her breath became slow and even once more.

Then she reached into her pocket and took out her cell phone. She would call her shrine later. First, she had to call Shindou-san to tell her the good news.

* * *

Author's note: This story was written for the tenth blind_go challenge on Livejournal in September 2010.


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